Do You Make These Mistakes With Phone Inquiries?

Do you know why it actually works against you to answer most questions callers ask?
Or why it’s so difficult getting callers to see your value – no matter what you tell them?
And why merely asking them what their budget is, can make them not want to book you?

These are examples of innocent mistakes almost every photographer makes when talking with telephone inquiries. But they’re peanuts compared to the most common mistake of all – not knowing how to end with getting the wedding consultation appointment or the photo session booking.

Here’s the problem: You get calls with people telling you everything sounds wonderful but then they balk at the price. Or they say they have to talk with their partner and then they never call back.

And it’s frustrating. What can you do? All these potential clients are slipping through your fingers, along with their money, and there doesn’t seem to be any way for you to stop them from disappearing. And nothing you’re doing works.

How can you turn that around? That’s what I want to tell you about.

The costly truth

Insidiously what also happens is that each caller who doesn’t end up doing business with you is costing you money. If you’re paying to be listed on websites or paying for ads and marketing, then those are dollars flushed down the drain when you don’t get a client at the end of a call.

Of course there’s also the entire lost revenue of not getting that client at all. And not only that but you lose any referrals that client would’ve been sending you for years afterwards, and lose all the referrals’ revenues as well. All this makes it something to take very seriously, doesn’t it? Because your income… now and into the future… hinges on calls.

80% of your success is based on how successfully you handle inquiries

Why? Because no matter how great a photographer you are, no matter how fine your customer service, no matter how exceptional your products, the simple fact is if you’re not getting people in front of your lens, you won’t have people to sell photos to. And those people have to be the right kind of client, qualified and willing to pay you for your services and products.

Maybe it’s that I’ve been in the wedding photography industry since before the, umm… turn of the century… when we all used landlines instead of texting, messaging and emailing, so back then virtually EACH and EVERY prospective client called. I cut my teeth handling phone inquiries one after the other, day after day, year after year, learning early on how to handle every stall, every objection, every question, every time – and have been doing it since. I’m still handling calls today in my photography business.

Naturally, by now I’ve refined it even further than the early days to where I find out fast if the caller is a “high probability client” or a “low probability client” and sort through them quick, turning the good ones into consultation appointments (if they’re calling about wedding photography) or into a booked session (if they’re calling for a photo session).

And one of the things I found is that the bulk of whether you’re successful or not has a lot to do with your clients – and getting the right clients is handled in the first phone call. That’s why it’s so important to your success to get this part right. It’s probably the single biggest major reason why you may be getting nowhere and why you’re feeling frustrated by callers.

The Good News

The good news is, it’s not that your photography’s terrible and it’s not that your prices are out of whack. It’s not that you’re not fully experienced and it’s not that the market’s all price oriented. All it is most likely, as crazy as it sounds, is you’re not conducting calls in a way that gives you the best advantages and results.

Look, it’s in that first phone call where you can sort for the best candidates to take on as clients, the ones most likely to invest in your services and products at the prices you’re asking for, the ones who make working as a photographer a dream career. Those are the clients who love what you do and appreciate it and want it.

Have you ever had a client like that? You want more of those?

So when people call you, you want to increase the odds they do business with you. For instance, here’s what else I do in the first call. I look to disrupt the competition. In many cases, especially if you’re a wedding photographer, your callers are looking at and speaking with several other wedding photographers. Don’t assume for a second you’re the only one. You want to take all the others out of the running in that first phone call so you become the most obvious front runner choice (if not the ONLY choice!) for the prospective client to see and book.

So in that first phone call, what you want to do is qualify them, pre-sell them, take out the competition, become the #1 candidate for the job, and very importantly, get a commitment from the caller where they agree to go to the next step with you, making an appointment to see your wedding photography or agree to getting photographed by you if they’re calling about a photo session.

And doing all this in about one 15 minute phone call.

Imagine what would your life would be like then? I’ll tell you what it would be like. Let me share another photographer’s story:

Photographer immediately boosts sales by $2,000

Laura S., a photographer in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, had a common problem. Her callers would say, “yes, everything sounds perfect” but she’d still lose them. They’d end up saying, “I have to talk with my fiance” and she’d never hear from them again. It was driving her nuts and she didn’t know what to do.

She’d get advice from online groups of other photographers, and they’d suggest a bunch of different things, even contradicting each other with their suggestions, which gets confusing… She’d cobble together their suggestions with whatever sounded right and try it out but still end up with dismal results and lots of wasted leads going nowhere, never to return to her. No wonder their advice didn’t work, since many of the photographers offering up opinions were themselves struggling with the same problems and trying to figure out how all this works best.

So she and Cathy, another photographer, decided to take a shortcut and got together with me coaching them on how to turn phone inquiries into booked appointments and photo sessions with real, live paying clients.

Here’s what I did for them. I dove right into putting together a simple step-by-step formula giving them everything they needed to get from nothing to where they wanted to be. I didn’t hold anything back. I showed them exactly what I do and why I do it. I pulled the curtain back and revealed what makes prospective clients tick and gave them the exact time-tested strategies, techniques and tactics that really work to turn inquiries into committed paying clients.

And I wanted them to experience results fast. There’s no reason this should take a long time to nail down.

Bottom line: They learned a well honed system purposefully designed to get them immediately and efficiently to their goal of getting either more qualified wedding consults or booked photo sessions out of inquiries.

I conducted a private class coaching Laura and Cathy on these tactics. It was almost two and a half hours covering every step of the call from when the phone rings to when you say goodbye. That also included questions they had (probably the same questions you’d have) which I freely and fully answered, giving them even more tips and insights (turns out Cathy wasn’t getting enough calls so that needed other action).

But I heard within one week from Laura. She put my teachings to use immediately and literally within a few days she took an inquiry where the caller was all about the price (in fact, the caller told Laura her prices were “outrageous”) – and turned it around into a consult.

And not only did she get the wedding consult appointment, but get this… at that consult, using what I had showed her…

She booked the highest sale of her life! $5,000! On the spot!

You have to understand something here. Up to then, Laura was losing people on the phone. That’s why she wanted coaching. Up to then, her bookings, when and if she got one, were around $3,000. So getting $5,000 wasa 66% increase! I don’t know about you, but to me and to Laura, that’s a huge bump up! it’s almost twice what she was making before. Making another $2,000 on top of what you normally make is nothing to sneeze at, and the thing is she may not even have gotten that client at all if she continued handling calls the way she was doing.

So I’ve decided to make this audio file available to others. I turned it into a course, “How to Turn Phone Inquiries Into Paying Clients.”

And it doesn’t matter where you are. You could be in Cape Girardeau, Missouri or Las Vegas, Nevada. You could be in Castleford, Idaho or Castleford, England. As long as there’s a market for photography, then these techniques work. If people are calling you, then you can turn them into paying clients. This isn’t theory. It’s proven to work.

Your mileage may differ but if you’re stuck, or have nowhere to go but up, all you need is the right knowledge and techniques, just like Laura did.

Here’s the thing. So few photographers know about these strategies that it gives you an almost unfair advantage. For example…

Check out what you’re getting in this course:

One weird trick that gets the caller to immediately relax, like you and feel they’ve got to have what you offer

One easy step to take that automatically gets you more clients

A simple question that will have you zero in on who the best clients are – and who aren’t so you don’t waste your time on tire kickers

The WRONG type of rapport to establish and what to do instead that really ramps up them liking you (because people buy from people they like, right?)

They have to trust you to buy from you too – how to induce the right kind of trust and credibility fast

What to casually say that will unleash their desire to buy from you, and buy big when they do

How to get them envisioning buying your photography products

How to talk your photography up without sounding like you’re bragging

What not to overlook nailing down in the call. If you DON’T do this, you’re unintentionally stopping them from booking you

WHEN to talk about price and HOW to bring it up. Do this at the wrong time in the wrong way and you’ll hear lots of “goodbyes” instead of “okays!”

What to say when they bring up price before you do that gets them OFF the price and back on track talking about YOUR photography

A natural way to get callers to book while they’re on the phone with you. No more “can I call you back” and then disappearing off the face of the earth.

How to ask for payment smoothly, without sounding all “businessy” and in the most casual way possible – that gets the payment.

You’ll see how to turn all this into more clients, paying you the fees you want to get.

Also, let me ask you, do you get people right now saying things like, “I have to speak to my fiance”? Don’t worry, I’m also going to show you what to say when you hear common objections on your calls, such as that one, and:

“I have to think it over”“I have to check my schedule”“I have to check my fiance’s schedule”“I don’t have my credit card on me”“Can you email me the information?”

This is like having all the answers before you take the exam!

And there’s more. Because I’ve loaded so much more into this material to give you a way unfair advantage. Here’s what you’ll get in addition to over two hours of audio instruction:

BONUS #1 ALL the phone call steps diagrammed out in a flow chart so you can easily have the steps right beside you and refer to them as you go through a call.

BONUS #2 An audio file of me doing a REAL phone call. Because one of the best ways to learn how to handle calls is to hear it being done – so you pick up how it should sound and how it’s paced. This audio will do that for you. It’s like you’re sitting next to me watching over my shoulder as I speak with a caller.

BONUS #3 If you call them back and get their voicemail, I’ll give you the exact message to leave. This kind of message gets them replying back more often than I bet they’re doing now… And know what happens when you get more replies? You get more clients!

BONUS # 4 I also want to give you a play-by-play explanation of why I’m saying what I’m saying throughout a call so you’ll know exactly the psychology behind it and how it works. Everything will be clear and make sense to you. You’ll finally feel and be in control of your calls.

BONUS # 5 I’ll share with you how I disrupt the competition from other wedding photographers in that call and take them out of the running… and how I arm myself with ammo that gets the bride to dump her objections, up her budget and see me as the obvious first choice.

By the way, there’s a deliriously wonderful side effect to doing that. What is it? It’s that she then absolutely, positively wants to meet me right quick – so I get in and get the wedding a.s.a.p. What’s also great about it is it doesn’t depend on you racing every time to be the first person to call them back (not that you shouldn’t respond promptly).

Those five bonuses are valued at $300 but they’re all included free with the nearly two and a half hour audio class.

SPECIAL BONUS: With everything I’ve already listed above you could do very, very well. Yet there’s one more piece that, if you were to add it to this mix, your results might shoot through the roof. I know that sounds like hype, but it’s true. In fact, if you did just this one thing alone chances are you’d get more bookings. This strategy bonus is that powerful because it’s all about making you so enticing, so irresistible, it becomes a no-brainer for clients to say “YES!” So I’m going to include it as a special bonus. That alone is worth more than the entire price of the course!

Speaking of which, all this is only $265. But get this, order either now but no later than next Tuesday, and you can get the entire course consisting of 14 PDFs and three audio files for only $97.

Of course when you handle calls the way I show you, you’ll probably make $97 back quickly, probably on the first one or two clients, in which case this course actually costs you nothing because it ends up paying for itself. Fact is, I could’ve charged Laura one thousand dollars and she’d still come out 100% ahead, pocketing an additional $1,000 on the first client alone!

Here’s my Guarantee that makes it so you CAN NOT lose:

Try out my materials for 21 days AFTER you receive the course. I want you to go through the material, check it out, try it out and see results for yourself – and if it doesn’t work for you, you don’t pay me a single penny. I’ll refund your purchase 100%. I’m that confident because these techniques work. But if for any reason you don’t start seeing better, more profitable results using my course then simply let me know in 21 days and you’ll be refunded, no questions asked. My strategies and techniques must work for you – or you pay nothing. So I’m making it so that you risk absolutely nothing.